Sunday, 26 July 2009

I'm not a great fan of Steve Farrar's SF Flash blend, but I was given several clumps to try out a year ago and am desperately trying to get rid of it. There is just too much wastage with it, and it also retains more water than I expected. Anyway I have tied up some small baitfish patterns onto some Eumer tubes yesterday for targeting Perch with. At 45mm in length they should be perfect.

4
comments:

Looks good, but dont really get the point in not tying them directly to a short heavy hook type as usually for such baitfish patterns with one tie in point. For example Gamakatsu Iseama is nice.

I only just bought my first pack of SF blend in white and really love the stuff. If u got the patience its not too hard to not make any waste when tying with it. I tend to hold on the middle of the bunch and drag all the loose ends out and stack em onto the middle. Tie it in there and then fold back the forward pointing section and taper it nicely.

Makes a nice addition to other materials used sparsely in the tail or wing or as complete baitfishies as the ones u've created there. Usually ends up even better with a nice epoxied head ontop of the eyes and to help hold the shape of the wing.

I've tied them on to tubes purely because I can place the hook lightly into the back of it so once a perch is on the actual tube pops off and doesn't damage the fly itself. A bit of an over kill, I agree but nice to experiment with.

I usually take it all out of the package and hold around the bunch and softly loosen the right amount on the middle of the stack while i hold onto each stack and seperate with the fingers. When im done tapering and cleaning up the small stack i tie it in and after that i clean up the table and stack all the loose small pieces of flash and hairs and tie em on aswell before i fold it all back on itself. This way there is around 0% waste but it takes quite some patience to clean all the small pieces up and stacking them properly.

But really like the look of the material when mixed with other types of flash and fibers/feathers, a very mixable material which is a big plus imo.